


You Decide Alone

by readfah_cwen



Category: Glee
Genre: Gay Bashing, Gen, Homophobic Language, Non-Graphic Mentions of Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-19 00:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1449031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readfah_cwen/pseuds/readfah_cwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t know what his story is. I only know what mine is. And I've been fighting these guys for a really long time.” /Kurt-centric Bash reaction fic/</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Decide Alone

**Author's Note:**

> tw: mentions of assault; homophobia & slurs; title from _no one is alone_ from _into the woods_

_ “i don’t know what his story is. i only know what mine is. and i’ve been fighting these guys for a really long time.” _

**i.**

Kurt Hummel retreats like the sea. Gently, softly, barely a breath of water over the sand, heading back to the interior. He collects himself, regains his strength, then strikes out again, steadily wearing away at the beach.

It’s amazing how passive that beach can be. The puzzled looks and jokes when he tries out for football, the talks of HIV/AIDS pointedly directed at him during health class, the way his neighbour shouts at his friend to not be such a fag. No emphasis, either, it’s just a casual insult between friends. So passive. Not someone trying to beat your face in.

Every now and again, though, he meets a rock.

Karofsky. Azimio. Rick. Puck, once upon a time. Each and every last one of those bullies who liked to make Kurt intimately acquainted with lockers, dumpsters, toilets, hard walls, hard ground, the taste of blood in his mouth. There is the man who once followed Kurt out of the grocery store and in his pickup for two miles, coming close, honking, then backing off, dogging Kurt endlessly. Kurt finally shook him off with some pretty impressive driving, if he did say so himself, and saw in the light of the pickup’s tail lights the words  _America the_   _Free_.

Once he was safe, Kurt had sat shaking in the dark of his car, trying and failing to retreat, retreat, retreat. Sometimes, often,  _always_ , there is a storm inside Kurt when it comes to this, rocking waves that batter at his strength. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and it might be a lot of bull, but Kurt clings to it because what else does he have? _  
_

He doesn’t tell his dad about these things. It comes out, when  _fag_  is said with a bit more emphasis, but Kurt doesn’t want his dad to know. If he’s told nobody should have to deal with this, he doesn’t know what he’ll do, because he  _has_ to. It’s all he knows.

**ii.**

Kurt Hummel meets Blaine Anderson.  _I ran, Kurt_. Kurt thinks he spends his entire life running, pulling back, pulling away, because all his iron will resides in a citadel in the middle of dark waters. Blaine makes him want to strike out, not just a barb or two as he laps up against the beach, but to really stake his claim. He will carve chunks out of the world, and he will make his place in the aftermath, and he will pulverize those rocks.

So he follows Karofsky into the locker room. He unleashes his storm, and answers the age old question: What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? The result: Kurt is left shaking in his sunlit car, trying to decide if driving to Blaine would be running toward or retreating away. In the end, Kurt turns the key and goes, because all he knows is right now Blaine seems like a safe harbour. 

Karofsky pushes Blaine against the chainlink wall, and Kurt smashes out again. This time, he feels like he made a difference, because at least Blaine loses that look of a cornered animal. They go for lunch, and they don’t discuss politics at all, because a new  _Vogue_  has come out. Time passes. Kurt starts moving with Blaine’s own rhythm, he sees the way his dad feels that same shaking rage-fear at what Kurt has to go through, he deals with the passive and the active, and he runs to Dalton. It’s a lovely, safe place, but Kurt’s missing his normal life things while structuring his thoughts around the definitions of hiding, and soon he’s back where he belongs.

**iii.**

Kurt Hummel moves to New York, New York. It’s the home of the Stonewall Riots, the first pride parade, Broadway. It has gay bars in the nineteen sixties, and gay marriage in the twenty tens. Barring San Francisco — and really, Kurt couldn’t handle all that fog — New York is the closest he has to paradise in this great country of his. He’s wanted to live here for so long, has watched all the movies, seen all the postcards, heard all the stories. He’s even visited, and every moment was magical. Moving there feels like settling into his claim on the world. It feels like coming home. 

The bagels are also just as good as everyone claims. Definite bonus.

A little place like Lima, Ohio hardly seems to exist in his plane of reality any more. He’s free of it, he’s boundless, and he gets to work in high fashion and learn in high arts. Kurt retreats only because he loses his harbour; everything else is perfect. Kurt is perfect. Rachel is perfect. The loft could use real walls and less Santana touching his stuff, but it’s also perfect.

He doesn’t pay attention to the news, every day. He misses his dad, but he’s where he and his dad both want him to be. He eats his bagels and he goes to class, he kisses cute British boys, then later he gets his very own American boy back with him. There are people he says goodbye to, and times he doesn’t want to sing, because he can’t reach his voice. He keeps going, because that’s what he does. He doesn’t pay attention to the news every day, but when he does catch it, he hears about boys who kiss boys and everyone like them who are getting hurt. He doesn’t turn off, tune out, ignore that news, but he doesn’t linger on it either. He can’t change everyone’s world; he can only be himself.

Russ once shares the elevator with Kurt. That’s it, the extent of their interactions. Russ politely asks which number Kurt is going to, and when they realize they’re headed to the same floor, Russ says he’s visiting his friend. They chat on the way up, most of Kurt’s mind on dinner. They say friendly goodbyes. A couple of months later, Russ is jumped by two men in a pickup truck and when their neighbour tells them Kurt doesn’t make the connection at first. 

**iv.**

Kurt Hummel retreats into a sluggish sea. He remembers the guilt he felt over ignoring Karofsky’s calls. They talked about it, eventually, and he talked with his dad, with Rachel and Mercedes, with Blaine. He shouldn’t have felt guilty then, and he certainly doesn’t have reason to feel guilty now. Maybe he should never feel guilty for running from these things; maybe it’s not really running. It pricks at him though, because he feels so complacent. He’s never known a force like what Russ dealt with,  _is_  dealing with in the hospital. What Blaine felt once, and leaves him with his attention focused on anything but the news. Kurt watches his fiancé and knows he’s being watched, and given space, in turn. 

He attends the vigil. He fights with Rachel. He hears somebody calling for help, and he tastes blood in his mouth. It’s not a flavour he’s missed, he thinks dizzily, as he slips away into ringing ears and darkness.

**v.**

Kurt Hummel wakes up in the hospital, and has a talk with his dad. He tries to articulate what relentless attacks, the petty, the extreme, the blurring lines between those two points, the societal knife to his ribs feels like. He tries to explain that he’s sick of calm waters, that he finds his peace in action. Kurt has a storm inside him, and even with cuts stretching his face and his knuckles throbbing dully in tandem with his head, he wants to find an immovable object to throw it against.

Looking back, Karofsky relented. Looking back, he saved that man in the alley.  _Don’t do it again_ , his dad says, and Kurt makes no promises.  _I’ve been fighting too,_ his dad says, and Kurt doesn’t need to make promises because he knows his dad is proud Kurt knows himself so well. He may not be able to change everyone’s world, he may be only himself, but he is a spectacular self.

Kurt also has everything around him that he needs to fortify himself if he falters. There are rainbow colours on his bedside table, and there are well wishes from people he’s never met. He has his dad’s unconditional love, be Kurt football winner or bashing survivor. He has Rachel, who can be so frustrating, but also the best of best friends. He has Mercedes, who holds his hand and tells him that Burt’s wrong, he would  _totally_  look awesome with a scar. He has Sam, who brightly fills the role of cheering people up. He has Artie, who talks like nothing happened, because being treated with pity sucks. Elliott and Dani do a duet; he tears up, missing One Three Hill. There are more, so much more, and Kurt’s grateful for them all.

Blaine lies in bed with him, delicately tracing the still-fading bruises on Kurt’s knuckles.

"I’m angry," Kurt says. It’s not a rage that fills him, something distracting and incessant. At the moment, he’s soft with love and a bit floaty from the painkillers the doctors sent him home with. He wouldn’t have done a thing differently, and he’s riding his storm happily.

"I know," Blaine says. He squeezes Kurt’s fingers, gently. Of course he does. He’s not the only one who might, because there’s Russ, and that man in the alley, and so many others just like them, but he’s the only one who’s holding Kurt’s hand right then and now.

Kurt Hummel retreats like the sea, but when he comes back, he comes back hard. And there isn’t a force on earth that could change that.

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr link](http://boldmistakes.tumblr.com/post/82329531655/you-decide-alone-kurt-centric-bash-reaction-fic)


End file.
